AMT to improve West Island train commute

A coalition of elected officials calling on the provincial and federal governments to provide funds to improve commuter train service to the West Island. ((CBC))

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The Agence Métropolitaine de Transport (AMT), which runs Montreal's suburban train network, will announce its plans to improve commuter transit from the city's downtown area to the West Island Tuesday afternoon.

The price tag to revamp service would be $ 676 million, the AMT confirmed.

According to the French-language daily La Presse, the plan would increase ridership on the Vaudreuil-Hudson line from 3.8 million passengers to more than nine million passengers per year.

The newspaper is also reporting that the number of daily departures between downtown and the West Island would triple.

The AMT will announce the details of its plan at 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.

Local elected officials from the West Island are still concerned, however, the federal and provincial governments are not interested in financing such a project.

"We are trying to convince the governments that hey, people count," Clifford Lincoln said.

"You can't just suddenly make decisions that ignore people that are taxpayers, that are residents, that are commuters at the same time as you ask them to leave the roads and use commuter services," continued Lincoln, who speaks for Train de l'Ouest, a coalition of officials lobbying for better service to the West Island and Vaudreuil-Soulanges.

The coalition has already gathered more than 5,000 signatures from commuters for a petition demanding more funding for commuter rail transit.

West Island commuters are competing with another big rail project, a direct shuttle train linking Trudeau International Airport in Dorval to downtown Montreal.

The Aéroports de Montréal has been lobbying for a shuttle train, and in March, the provincial government pledged $200 million to the project, on condition that Ottawa puts up a similar amount.